The Counsellor Read online

  This put things in a fresh light to Mrs. Yerbury, and she hurried off at once.

  “I’ll be back in a moment, sir,” she assured him as she turned at the door.

  In going out, she blundered into Whitgift who had come to inquire about The Counsellor’s condition. He sat down on the chair by the bed side and began in a sympathetic tone:

  “By Jove, you’ve given us a fright, I can tell you, Mr. Brand. I thought you were a goner, by the look of you. Lucky I was on the premises, for these two women were less than no use. They went into mild hysterics with excitement. Feeling better now, I hope?”

  “A shade,” said The Counsellor with a not very successful attempt to smile. “Don’t worry. It’s an old trouble of mine that sometimes bothers me.”

  Whitgift evidently had more tact than the housekeeper, for at this hint he refrained from further questions on the subject.

  “Care for a spot of brandy to pull you together?” he asked.

  The Counsellor shook his head feebly.

  “No, no brandy, thanks. How long was I unconscious?”

  Whitgift glanced at his watch.

  “Matter of five minutes, or so, I’d say. But you were pretty groggy when you came to, so I thought the best thing was to let you alone. It’s half an hour or more since you had your trouble. The doctor may be here any minute. He was out on his round when we rang him up, but they were to get in touch with him.”

  “I won’t see any damned doctor,” declared The Counsellor peevishly. “I know what’s wrong with me better than any G.P. I’m not going to be poked and prodded about by some ignorant sawbones. I mean it! I know what’s best for me. All I want is to get back to town again, and quicker than that.”

  In a minute or two, Mrs. Yerbury came back to announce that The Counsellor’s chauffeur was on his way up. With the housekeeper’s return, The Counsellor seemed to have lost any desire for conversation; and Whitgift, after a word or two of sympathy, left him in her charge. Ten minutes later, the chauffeur was ushered in.

  “Just leave us for a minute,” The Counsellor asked Mrs. Yerbury.

  When she had left the room, he beckoned to the chauffeur to bend over the bed, and whispered something in his ear.

  “Very good, sir. I’ll see to that.”

  The chauffeur left the bedroom and Mrs. Yerbury returned to find The Counsellor making a rather dizzy attempt to walk about the room.

  “I must have dropped it when that turn came on,” he said, half to himself. “Mrs. Yerbury, would you mind giving me your arm? I want to see if I can find something I’ve lost. It may be in Mr. Treverton’s office.”

  She helped him along the corridor, and in the office they found Whitgift.

  “I’ve lost an important paper,” The Counsellor explained. “I think it may have slipped out of my pocket when I came down on the floor.”

  He glanced rather dazedly hither and thither, casting his eyes over the floor, the windows, even the ceiling, as if slightly bemused still.

  “Not here,” he confessed at last. “You’ll let me have it if you come across it? A blue foolscap sheet. Thanks. Now I think I’ll go down to my car. My man was to bring it round to the door. Sorry to have given you all this bother. No choice of mine, I assure you.”

  When his car had passed out of the avenue gate, he picked up the speaking-tube and gave a fresh order to the driver:

  “Stop at the police station and bring the inspector out to the car.”

  In a few minutes the car drew up, and fortunately Pagnell was on the premises. Evidently the chauffeur had said something to him about The Counsellor’s attack, for he came out, looking rather concerned.

  “Get in,” said The Counsellor, opening the car door. “This is urgent and I’m in no state to hang about. I want to get home. I’ll send my man back with you after that. But you’ve got to come now. I’ve got a damned good ‘attempted murder’ case for you.”

  The inspector did not even pause to get his hat. He stepped into the car, which drove off at once Londonward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Control of the Company

  BY morning, practically all traces of indisposition had passed off, and The Counsellor went down to his office as usual. When Sandra and Standish came into his room in answer to his summons, they found an unwontedly grim and hard-mouthed Counsellor awaiting them.

  “You look a bit under the weather,” commented Standish, critically. “Sat up too late last night, playing Musical Chairs, or what?”

  “Yes,” admitted The Counsellor, “with Death playing zig-a-zig-a-zag on his violin, the way he does in the Danse Macabre. Amusing experience, but it leaves the deuce and all of a headache after it.”

  “A bit strange in his manner,” said Standish to Sandra. “Trying to be mysterious, and obscure, and cryptic, and allusive, and all that sort of thing. Tongue furred, most likely, too. You impress us both, Mark, which counts two points to you. Now spit it out, will you?”

  “This is it,” said The Counsellor. “And for your kind remarks, I’ll just give you the tale as it comes and you’ll get the zig-a-zig-a-zag bit in its proper place but not before. You remember that the Annual General Meeting of Treverton’s company was fixed for last night? I went down to it. This is what happened there.”

  He outlined the course of the meeting, briefly but accurately.

  “What on earth do you want to buy a concern like that, for?” demanded Standish. “From all we’ve heard, it’s a pure dud.”

  “I don’t particularly want to buy it. I hope I won’t have to buy it at all. You’ll see my point later. But let’s get on. After the meeting, there was some chat which made it plain that Albury and Whitgift aren’t on happy terms. Then Albury, having shaken off Whitgift, invited me to have a private talk with him in Treverton’s little office. We went there. Did I ever tell you that Treverton was an anti-fresh-air fiend? Draught-excluders and all similar fittings ad lib. That has its bearing on the tale.”

  Throwing away the remains of his cigarette, he took a fresh one from the box beside him and lit it.

  “I don’t remember very clearly what Albury had to say to me. A rather greasy fellow, I judge, with a sharp eye to the main chance. I imagine he thought he was ingratiating himself with me with a view to the future, if I took over the company. But that’s by the way. After a few minutes, he produced a decanter from a cupboard and offered me a drink. Some stuff of Treverton’s, he informed me. Brandy’s not my special line in connoisseurship, but that stuff did no credit to Treverton’s taste. Very good for reviving a cart-horse after an exhausting day, I don’t doubt. But I happened to be thirsty just then, and I took a good pull at it. Then the maid came with a message to say that Albury was wanted on the ’phone. So he left me to amuse myself till he got back. I haven’t seen him since. I picked up a book from the shelves, to pass the time, and sat down to wait for him. Then I began to feel queerish. And I got queerer: dizzy, sick, a bit bemused in the brain department, and most damnably tired. . . .”

  “He’d doped you?” interrupted Standish.

  “Wait a moment,” Sandra broke in. “You say this was some of old Mr. Treverton’s brandy? Suppose it had been doped for him by someone. Then this Albury man might have given it to you without knowing there was anything wrong with it.”

  “Well, leave the dope question aside for the moment,” said The Counsellor, rather impatiently. “My symptoms were a dashed sight more interesting to me at that moment. My ears began to buzz and I felt a bit breathless. That screwed me up—and it took some screwing—to get out of my chair and go to the door. I thought fresh air was what I wanted. So I turned the handle. By that time I was fairly muzzy; but even so I can remember the jump it gave me when I found the door was locked on the outside. And, naturally, when I couldn’t get out, I felt more choky than ever. So I rang the bell and staggered over to the window, meaning to open it. But it was fast, too, immovable. So I just put my shoulder through a pane or two and then I collapsed.”

&n
bsp; Sandra’s face showed her feelings, but Standish refused to take The Counsellor too seriously. He had suffered in the past.

  “Well, you’re here,” he pointed out, “so evidently you didn’t die. That’s most satisfactory. Now go on from where you awoke with the sawbones and fair-haired nurse by your bedside.”

  “There’s a bit comes in before that,” corrected The Counsellor with a faint grin. “Just as I collapsed, the door opened and Whitgift shot out of a sort of general meeting on the door-mat. He picked me up and carried me into old Treverton’s bedroom hard by, where I awoke later to find Mrs. Yerbury watching over me. You remember the old housekeeper?” he added, turning to Sandra.

  “Yes, a nice old thing.”

  “Well, the nice old thing had got it into her head that I’d had a fit, or something; and it seemed advisable not to disabuse her of that notion until I’d pulled myself together a bit and could think clearly. So I encouraged her illusions. And when Whitgift came in to see how I was getting along, I let him think so, too. They wanted to call in the local sawbones, but I barred that. I was beginning to feel a bit better, by then, and I was clear enough in the head to know that the less I talked, the better, especially to a body-snatcher. You see, I’d caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and I’d got a nice pinky complexion that would have done for a beauty-specialist’s advertisement.”

  “That must have given you a start,” admitted Standish, making a pretence of inspecting The Counsellor’s rather leathery and weatherbeaten face. “Like the old lady in the rhyme: ‘Oh, dearie, dearie me, this is none of I’, I suppose.”

  “Thereabouts,” agreed The Counsellor, unperturbed. “But to continue. I got them to ’phone up for my car. I’d sent Picton to get his tea in Grendon St. Giles while the meeting was on. I made them direct him to come up to Longstoke House and put my car in the garage till I felt fit to get home. Then he was to come up and see me. I gave Mrs. Yerbury the impression that I had some medicine in the car, specially in case of such fits coming on; and Picton would get it for me when he came. When he turned up, I gave him some directions privately, and ordered him to bring the car to the front door. Then, when he’d gone, I suddenly discovered that I’d lost a valuable paper out of my pocket. . . .”

  “So they’d been giving you a fan, had they? while you were dead to the world. Was it a fiver or a tenner?” Standish inquired.

  “It was imaginary,” retorted The Counsellor. “But I managed to stagger up and look for it in Treverton’s office.”

  “Well, I think you might have had more sense,” said Sandra, severely. “You might have overstrained your heart, or anything. Why couldn’t you wait for the doctor they’d sent for?”

  “Because he might have spotted what my trouble was, and I didn’t think that advisable,” The Counsellor explained. “Much better to leave somebody guessing. I mean the person who tried to do me in. Left as it was, he couldn’t be sure that I suspected his little effort. For all he could tell, his attempt might have brought on some real tendency to fits on my part, in which case I’d never guess that he’d been up to any game. But if a medico had blundered in and diagnosed the real affair, then my criminal friend would have known at once that things were getting warm for him. See that?”

  “Please drop all this mystery-business, Mark,” Sandra begged. “Tell us the plain story, please. It’s really worrying to hear about things like this.”

  “Very well,” The Counsellor agreed. “Note, first of all, that this affair took place in Treverton’s office. Whether that brandy was doped or not is beyond proof at present. I didn’t get the chance to grab the decanter after my collapse; and if the liquor was doped, I’m prepared to bet that by this time it’s been poured away and replaced by innocuous stuff. But as a matter of fact, I’m not worrying much about that part of the stunt. What I want you to note is that when I tried to get out, I found the door locked on the outside. Now compare that with the Treverton affair, Sandra. Remember that old Mrs. Yerbury noticed, the morning after Treverton died, that the key of that little office was on the outside of the door.”

  “Yes, so she told me,” Sandra confirmed. “So you think. . . .”

  “Wrong word. I don’t ‘think’, because I happen to know,” said The Counsellor triumphantly. “Take it from me, Treverton didn’t die in that garage at all. He died in his office, just as I’d have done if I hadn’t been lucky. I knew that as soon as I saw the pinkness of my skin in that bedroom looking-glass after I woke up again.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” asked Standish, with a shade more respect in his tone.

  “This is where thoroughness comes in, you see,” explained The Counsellor with no concealment of his self-satisfaction. “When I heard about Treverton’s so-called suicide, my curiosity was aroused. . . .”

  “It would be,” commented Sandra. “Trust it to waken up on the slightest excuse.”

  “Well, it waked up to some purpose,” retorted The Counsellor. “One of the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning is that the blood goes pinkish; so I found by reading up the matter. And the sensations I had in that room tallied pretty closely with a bad dose of carbon monoxide. And remember Treverton’s anti-fresh-air notions, which made his office pretty well air-tight. It’s not a big room. Say twenty by fifteen feet and perhaps twelve or fourteen feet high to the ceiling. Call it a cubic content of roughly 4,000 cubic feet. Now the forensic medicine experts say that about 2 per cent. of carbon monoxide in the air will produce fatal effects in a very short time. Two per cent. of 4,000 cubic feet is 80 cubic feet; so if 80 cubic feet of carbon monoxide got into that room, the gas would be at a fatal concentration or thereabouts, according to the best authorities that I read.”

  “But how could they get it in without your seeing it done?” demanded Standish. “You’re not altogether an owl, Mark, I’ll say that for you. And where could they manufacture the stuff? You didn’t see any charcoal stove about, I take it?”

  “Oh, no. The room was quite O.K. But I keep my eyes open, you know, Wolf. And when I pulled myself together, I gave these orders about Picton putting my car into the garage when he arrived. Then when he turned up, I gave him private instructions to go back to the garage, ostensibly to bring the car round to the front door. Actually I told him to put his hand on the radiator of Treverton’s old car if it was still in the garage. It was. He did. And he found the radiator warm.”

  “Oh, now I begin to see,” Standish admitted. “Of course there’s a lot of carbon monoxide in a motor’s exhaust gases. . . .”

  “Anything up to 6 per cent., according to the authorities,” amplified The Counsellor, beaming. “No trouble in getting plenty of it, you see.”

  “But how did it get up to the office?” queried Sandra. “You say the door and the windows were all tight shut. They couldn’t have laid a pipe. . . .”

  “It wasn’t needed,” The Counsellor pointed out. “There was a pipe all ready for them. Probably you didn’t notice it, Sandra, as you’re not interested in mechanical and scientific things generally; but that house was originally lit by acetylene gas. The gas-plant was in part of the old stables, next door to the present garage. What’s more, Pagnell mentioned to me that in the gas-plant room a lot of old odds and ends had been stored, including some hose-pipe. And there’s a door between the garage and the room where the gas-plant is. So to get carbon monoxide pumped into the office, all you need do is to start up a car in the garage, clip a hose-pipe on to the end of the exhaust, fill up the old gas-reservoir with the exhaust gases, and then flood the stuff through the old acetylene piping. Quite neat.”

  “The acetylene piping’s still in place, is it? although they’ve gone over to electric light,” said Standish. “Are you sure? I’d have thought they’d have taken it out when they put the current in.”

  “Treverton was too stingy to face the expense of that. It would have meant a lot of re-plastering in the walls.”

  “But then the poison gas from the reservoir must have got i
nto every room in the house,” objected Standish.

  The Counsellor shook his head.

  “No,” he explained. “On my first visit, I noticed the end of the acetylene piping in the ceiling of Miss Treverton’s room; but the end was pinched where they’d cut it off short. Same in Treverton’s office. But when I crawled back into Treverton’s office in search of my lost and imaginary paper I had a look at the fitting. Somebody had been busy in the meanwhile and had prised the piping open again. You’d never notice it unless you’d looked specially. But there it was. So one could flood that room, and that room only, with the stuff from the gas-reservoir”

  “Quite neat, as you say,” Standish admitted. “But exhaust gases stink a bit. Why didn’t you recognise the smell when the stuff began to pour in on top of you?”

  “The answer to that is ‘not beyond conjecture’,” The Counsellor pointed out. “I’m sorry I wasn’t in a fit state to make any investigations after my knockout. I’d like to have done so, just to have sound evidence; but I simply wasn’t up to it. Still, I think one can take it that whoever tried to do me in was a fairly sharp artist. The reservoir would act as a kind of washing-plant and the water in it would take out some of the stink; but I suspect that some kind of charcoal absorbing filter was shunted into the circuit as well, to make sure. A thing of the sort would be easy to fake up. So that the stuff that came down the old piping would be a pretty pure mixture of air and carbon monoxide. And carbon monoxide itself is quite odourless, and couldn’t be spotted by scent. Certainly I never noticed anything when I got landed with the thing.”

  He threw away the stub of his cigarette and took a fresh one from the box at his elbow. When he had lighted it, he resumed.

  “Now we come to the dog. Ah! Forgotten the dog, have you? It belonged to Miss Treverton and it was found dead out in the fields shortly before she disappeared. Well, as I see things, the dog’s death was a preliminary canter for the Treverton affair. Picton tells me that the garage at Longstoke House just holds two cars and no more. Call it twenty feet by twenty, and perhaps ten feet high. That’s about 4,000 cubic feet, which is just about the size of Treverton’s office. So by shoving the dog into the garage with a car-engine running, X—the criminal, whoever it is—could get a rough idea of how long the engine had to run before the carbon monoxide of the exhaust would reach a fatal concentration in a space roughly the same as Treverton’s office. That was just to make sure of the facts. And that explains the dog, I think.”